Genetic profile characterization and population study of 21 autosomal STR in Chinese Kazak ethnic minority group

Short tandem repeat loci have been recognized as useful tools in the routine forensic application and in recent decades, more and more new short tandem repeat (STR) loci have been constantly discovered, studied, and applied in forensic caseworks. In this study, we investigated the genetic polymorphisms of 21 STR loci in the Kazak ethnic minority as well as the genetic relationships between the Kazak ethnic minority and other populations. Allelic frequencies of 21 STR loci were obtained from 114 unrelated healthy Kazak individuals in the Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region of China. We observed a total of 159 alleles in the group with the allelic diversity values ranging from 0.0044 to 0.5088. The highest polymorphism was found at D19S433 locus and the lowest was found at D1S1627. Statistical analysis of the generated data indicated no deviation from Hardy–Weinberg equilibriums at all 21 STR loci. In order to estimate the population differentiation, allelic frequencies of all STR loci of the Kazak were compared with those of other neighboring populations using analysis of molecular variance method. Statistically significant differences were found between the studied population and other populations at 2–7 STR loci. A neighbor‐joining tree was constructed based on allelic frequencies of the 21 STR loci and phylogenetic analysis indicates that the Kazak has a close genetic relationship with the Uigur ethnic group. The present results may provide useful information for forensic sciences and population genetics studies, and can also increase our understanding of the genetic background of this group. The present findings showed that all the 21 STR loci are highly genetically polymorphic in the Kazak group, which provided valuable population genetic data for the genetic information study, forensic human individual identification, and paternity tests.     

PPh3‐Catalyzed Ring‐Expansion Reactions of Sulfamate‐Derived Cyclic Imines with Acetylenedicarboxylates

The PPh₃‐catalyzed ring‐expansion reaction of sulfamate‐derived cyclic imines with acetylenedicarboxylates has been developed. The reaction works quite efficiently under very mild conditions to afford benzo[g][1,2,3]oxathiazocine‐4,5‐dicarboxylate 2,2‐dioxide derivatives in high yields.     

Fluorocarbon and Hydrocarbon N‐Heterocyclic (C5–C7) Imidazole‐Based Liquid Crystals

By using three synthetic protocols, a series of fluorocarbon and hydrocarbon N‐heterocyclic imidazole‐based liquid crystals (LCs) and related imidazolium‐based ionic liquid crystals (ILCs) have been prepared. The ring size of the N‐heterocycle and the length of the N‐terminal chain (on the imidazolium unit in the ILCs) were modified, and the influence of these structural parameters on liquid‐crystal phases was investigated by means of polarizing optical microscopy (POM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and X‐ray diffraction (XRD). These new ILCs exhibit a disordered smectic phase (SmA), good thermal stabilities, a broad smectic phase range, a high dipole moment, relatively low melting points, but high clearing points and strong emission fluorescence relative to imidazole‐based LCs. These encouraging results have led us to believe these fluorocarbon and hydrocarbon N‐heterocyclic imidazole‐based LCs and related imidazolium‐based ILCs could be used as new liquid‐crystalline materials.     

Synthesis and bioevaluation of radioiodated nitroimidazole-based hypoxia imaging agents containing different charged substituents

Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry - In this work, a series of radiolabeled 2-nitroimidazole-based iodotriazoles containing positively charged, negatively charged, or neutral...     

Redox targeting of energy materials

The redox-mediated electrochemical–chemical process, when it involves the redox-targeting reaction with energy materials, has shown intriguing potential for various energy-related applications. This review starts with a brief discussion on the evolution of redox-targeting reactions for high-energy redox-flow batteries and the critical future studies for large-scale energy storage. Then, with spatially decoupled water electrolysis as an example, the merits of redox-targeting reaction by liberating the catalyst from electrode surface are highlighted, followed by an introduction of redox targeting–based thermal-to-electrical conversion. We have also featured various redox-targeting processes in other fields of study, such as electrochromic window, redox catalysis, and spent battery material recycling. Overall, this review attempts to demonstrate the incredible versatility and prospects of redox-targeting process for energy-related applications.     

Adaptive registration of diffusion tensor images on lie groups

With diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), more exquisite information on tissue microstructure is provided for medical image processing. In this paper, we present a locally adaptive topology preserving method for DTI registration on Lie groups. The method aims to obtain more plausible diffeomorphisms for spatial transformations via accurate approximation for the local tangent space on the Lie group manifold. In order to capture an exact geometric structure of the Lie group, the local linear approximation is efficiently optimized by using the adaptive selection of the local neighborhood sizes on the given set of data points. Furthermore, numerical comparative experiments are conducted on both synthetic data and real DTI data to demonstrate that the proposed method yields a higher degree of topology preservation on a dense deformation tensor field while improving the registration accuracy.     

硅单粒子位移损伤多尺度模拟研究

本文结合分子动力学方法和动力学蒙特卡罗方法, 研究了单个粒子入射硅引起的位移损伤缺陷的产生和演化过程; 基于Shockley-Read-Hall理论计算了单个粒子入射引起的位移损伤缺陷导致的泄漏电流增加及其演化过程, 比较了缺陷退火因子与泄漏电流退火因子之间的差异, 并将计算结果与实验值进行了对比. 结果表明, 计算泄漏电流时, 仅考虑一种缺陷的情况下缺陷退火因子与泄漏电流退火因子相同, 考虑两种缺陷类型情况下二者在数值上有所区别, 但缺陷退火因子仍能在一定程度上反映泄漏电流的退火行为. 分子动力学模拟中采用Stillinger-Weber势函数和Tersoff势函数时缺陷退火因子和泄漏电流退火因子与实验结果一致, 基于Stillinger-Weber势函数的计算结果与实验值更为接近.     

Investigation of viscoelastic focusing of particles and cells in a zigzag microchannel

Microfluidic particle focusing has been a vital prerequisite step in sample preparation for downstream particle separation, counting, detection, or analysis, and has attracted broad applications in biomedical and chemical areas. Besides all the active and passive focusing methods in Newtonian fluids, particle focusing in viscoelastic fluids has been attracting increasing interest because of its advantages induced by intrinsic fluid property. However, to achieve a well-defined focusing position, there is a need to extend channel lengths when focusing micrometer-sized or sub-microsized particles, which would result in the size increase of the microfluidic devices. This work investigated the sheathless viscoelastic focusing of particles and cells in a zigzag microfluidic channel. Benefit from the zigzag structure of the channel, the channel length and the footprint of the device can be reduced without sacrificing the focusing performance. In this work, the viscoelastic focusing, including the focusing of 10 μm polystyrene particles, 5 μm polystyrene particles, 5 μm magnetic particles, white blood cells (WBCs), red blood cells (RBCs), and cancer cells, were all demonstrated. Moreover, magnetophoretic separation of magnetic and nonmagnetic particles after viscoelastic pre-focusing was shown. This focusing technique has the potential to be used in a range of biomedical applications.